1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an image display apparatus that adjusts the brightness of image data and the amount of light emitted from a light source in accordance with inputted image data so as to perform an enhanced image display. The present invention further relates to an electronic apparatus that is provided with such an improved image display apparatus.
2. Related Art
When there is no power supplied from an external source, an image display apparatus known in the related art display images while controlling the amount of light that passes through a liquid crystal panel when a light source (e.g., cold-cathode tube) converts power that is supplied from a battery into light. An example of such a known image display apparatus is a notebook-sized personal computer that has a type of display device such as a liquid crystal panel or the like, which is not a self-luminous device. Generally speaking, the percentage of power consumed by a light source of an apparatus to total power consumed by entire components of the apparatus is large. It is a popular technique in the related art to decrease the amount of light that is emitted from a light source in order to reduce power consumption of an apparatus when the apparatus is driven by power supplied from a battery (hereafter, this well-known light-amount reduction technique is referred to as “dimming” where the context allows). As the amount of light emitted from a light source is decreased, so does the brightness of an image on the entire screen, which causes degradation in visibility. Therefore, a technical solution that achieves reduction in power consumption by decreasing the amount of light emitted from a light source without sacrificing visibility is desired in the art.
As a known example of technical solutions to cope with such a problem, JP-A-2004-246099 and JP-A-2004-54250 teach a technique for reducing power consumption without losing apparent luminosity, which is achieved by converting data that is originally represented in RGB into brightness color difference data so as to perform brightness enhancement and backlight amount reduction (dimming) processing.
Although it is possible to reduce power consumption by decreasing the amount of light that is emitted from a backlight to some degree as described above, further reduction in power consumption is desired in the art.